If I take Mr. C----'s house, Lady Davy will come to me. With respect to society, I want only a friend, or one person or two at most, to prevent entire solitude, and I am too weak to bear much conversation, and wholly unfit to receive any but persons with whom I am in the habits of intimacy. I can hardly express to you how deeply I feel your kindness. * * * * * As I must travel slowly, I shall not probably be at Stowey before Wednesday or Thursday next. Pray do not ask any body to meet me. I am upon the _strictest_ diet,--a wing of a chicken and a plain rice or bread pudding is the extreme of my _gourmanderie_. God bless you. My dear Poole, your affectionate friend, H. DAVY. Mr. Poole has been so obliging as to communicate to me some interesting particulars connected with the visit to which the foregoing letters allude. "During this last visit, (November and December 1827,) his bodily infirmity was very great, and his sensibility was painfully alive on every occasion. Unhappily, he had to sustain the affliction of the sudden death of Mr. R----, the son of a friend whom he highly valued; and though this afflicting event was, by the considerate and anxious attention of Lady Davy, first communicated to me by letter, to be imparted to him with every precaution, to avoid his being suddenly shocked, yet it was many days before he could recover his usual spirits, feeble as they were, and resume his wonted occupation. "On his arrival, he said, 'Here I am, the ruin of what I was;' but nevertheless, the same activity and ardour of mind continued, though directed to different objects. He employed himself two or three hours in the morning on his _Salmonia_, which he was then writing; he would afterwards take a short walk, which he accomplished with difficulty, or ride. After dinner, I used to read to him some amusing book. We were particularly interested by Southey's Life of Nelson. 'It would give Southey,' he said, 'great pleasure, if he knew how much his narrative affected us.'[108] [108] His admiration of this work bursts forth in his _Salmonia_, which he was writing at that time. He styles it "an immortal monument raised by Genius to Valour." "In the evening, Mr. and Mrs. W----, the former of whom he had long known, frequently came to make a rubber at whist. He was averse to seeing strangers; but on being shown the drawings of Natural History of a friend of mine of great talent, Mr. Baker of Bridgwater, he was anxious to know him, and was much pleased with his company. He suggested to him various subjects for investigation, concerning insects, and fish, particularly the eel. What pleasure would it give him were he now alive, to learn the interesting result of those suggestions! I hope the public will soon be made acquainted with them.